The availability and maintenance of an electronic business system is rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception in order for a company to compete in today's marketplace. Interactive web-sites allow companies to reach a wide range of audiences and to actively promote and sell their products, services, or other offerings. However, with the integration of an interactive and dynamic web-site or other on-line business system comes the need to provide for continuous monitoring of the performance and utilization parameters of these automated business systems.
Systems for performing basic statistical analysis of raw business data are known and available in various forms. For instance, the analysis of traditional business performance indicators such as sales volume, profit margins, inventory levels, order placement, and revenue levels are readily calculated from a database compilation of the relevant information. Known systems are adapted to query a database that contains the raw data used to calculate these performance indicators and are adapted to provide the resulting information to a user in various formats. Similarly, known systems and products that merely provide data mining or data warehousing do not allow the flexibility to incorporate analysis systems from third parties or the ability to interrelate the corresponding business metrics with ongoing business operations.
In the context of an electronic commerce-based business environment, access to dynamic information such as system load time, web-site visits (“page hits”), registered users, page refresh rate, and product ordering demographics is also required in order to effectively monitor and evaluate the performance of a particular electronic business system or web-site. When provided to a user, this information is often needed in a dynamic form in order to accurately portray the business metrics associated with the data. However, traditional statistical analysis systems or database applications are not conducive to monitoring information that is constantly being updated or is by its very nature dynamic. Further, the analysis of electronic business metrics often involves complicated query structures and logic algorithms that are not easily replicated on a static system such as a relational database. Known third party applications that specialize in analyzing a particular type of information are often better suited and more efficient at analyzing and reporting this type of information but known systems are unable to effectively integrate these types of third party analysis tools into a monitoring system structured for a particular company.
Furthermore, known software applications and other systems fail to provide a user with a business metrics monitoring platform that allows real-time integration with strategic performance indicators while also being able to integrate existing legacy data systems and third party applications. Known systems also fail to provide usable information beyond generic statistics and cannot quantify the impact of specific business initiatives on an overall business objective.